Thursday, July 17, 2008

When I was in the 12th grade, I read this story in English which spoke of some noble prince in some Indian kingdom who was so noble and good that his ashes turned to gold and flew around his kingdom like glowing gold particles. A lot of Indian tales generate an incomparable grandeur. I saw Yakshagaana today. The pathos, the helplessness and the sorrow conveyed through it was blinding. It may sound like an exaggeration but you have to be there to feel the curving of hands with arms, the music, the history, the larger mythos that surround the same. I suddenly felt like becoming Abhimanyu. A deep anguish marks the character killed by his own uncles and cousins, not by one but by scores of them forsaking all the rules and ethic that an Indian battle is marked by. Especially, such a macabre death dance as of Mahabharata. Balls to Indian legacy and honor. They were men and women. Real ones. Progenies of promiscuous liasions and consequences of guilt, sterility and tons of unfulfilled desire. Swishing the golden and red rod in his hand he conquered it all only to be slain by Karna, the bastard of the glorious Pandava family. War claims many but it is altogether different to fight your own brothers and marry your own sisters. Through these, emerges the lute melody again which generates wriggling faces with millions of wrinkles and unshed tears and a deep existential anguish of not belonging to nothing. It flattens conceptions of peace and beauty.

Photo story

Me is

I am red and seeded. My father dreamt so much and my mother was too careful. My brother just gaped as he grew. My grandpa writes letters, my teachers rely on students, they are very apologetic as well.